Paris votes to make 500 more streets car free 

When Socialist Party Mayor Anne Hidalgo assumed office in Paris in 2014, she promised big changes, including eliminating gridlock. 

Eleven years later, her supporters say, she has followed through.

“My living experience of Paris was a very car-centric city when I was younger, a very polluted city,” said Clément Drognat of the Clean Cities Network. “It was basically a long traffic jam.”

Drognat said that the city has changed dramatically under Hidalgo — for the better — through millions of euros worth of investments in bike lanes and crackdowns on cars. There are now automobile bans near schools and hefty parking fees on SUVs, while an old highway along the River Seine has been converted into a scenic path. 

More recently, two-thirds of voters supported the mayor’s latest environmental initiative, which bans cars from 500 roadways to make way for pedestrians, cyclists and new green spaces. It’s all part of Hidalgo’s plan to transform Paris into the world’s first car-free megacity. But not every Parisian thinks that’s a good idea.

Drognat, who campaigned for the recent referendum, said that the mayor’s moves bring Paris much closer to the stereotype of a city full of people on bikes with baguettes.

“I’m not sure if every Parisian has a baguette in their arm,” he said. “But we really see a huge difference in terms of the number of bikes. Every Parisian is quite conscious of the fact that there [are fewer] cars, that there is less congestion, that there is better air quality and that the overall quality of life has really improved.”

But those changes haven’t come without plenty of challenges. There have even been shocking incidents of violence, including the murder of a cyclist by an SUV driver last year after a disagreement about bike lanes.

“Time and time again, there are so many news articles about road rage, about anger and aggression,” saidMeredith Glaser of the Urban Cycling Institute in Belgium, a nonprofit that advocates for bike-friendly infrastructure in Europe and across the globe. 

Glaser said she believes that it’s all too easy for drivers to flip into a rage when they think cyclists are encroaching on their space.

“Once we open up our streets to slowing down, to more trees and plants and benches, places where people can actually stay and play and linger, then, we open up new kinds of emotions,” she said.

Marco Te Brommelstroet, who studies traffic and urban mobility at the University of Amsterdam, said that’s what Paris’ plan gets right: The recent vote wasn’t about banning cars, it was about opening streets up to the people who want to use them. He pointed to recent research finding that the vast majority of trips around Paris are made on foot, public transportation and bicycles. Cars represent just 4%. 

“It’s already such a small minority, which makes it very weird that we always focus on that minority,” Te Brommelstroet said.

Still, Hidalgo’s latest plan is coming under fire. Critics argue that low turnout in the vote – just 4% of Paris’ population — means a small minority of residents are deciding the fate of the city’s streets.

Yves Carra, the spokesman for a large Parisian automobile club, said he’s not opposed to some streets being made car free, but he worries that automobiles — and commuters who rely on them to get into the city center — are being left behind.

“When you do politics, normally it’s to improve people’s lives; it’s not to complicate their lives,” Carra said. “Well, they’re doing everything they can to complicate it. We will see what happens next year with the next elections.”

Hidalgo isn’t seeking another term in that election. But the choice of whether to continue her transformation of Paris will likely be on the ballot. In Carra’s view, it’s time to hit the brakes.